Archive for August, 2011
Keeping WordPress.com’s documentation up to date and accessible is one part of what the Happiness Team works on. We’ve long had lots of documentation, but we realized that the design and flow of the support site spoke more to us Happiness Engineers. How backward is that?
That all changes today. 
Before, you saw a long page filled with lists. Now you see eight content groupings on the homepage.
Before
After!
We looked at a lot of data about where people run into problems with WordPress.com. Using this we redesigned the site by weeding back overgrown lists, eliminating overly complicated jargon, and putting the answers to the questions you’ve asked most front and center.
If those new sections don’t have the answers you seek, we prominently placed a very effective search option at the top right that is perfect for pinpointing an answer to an obscure issue.
There’s more coming too so keep an eye out. We’ll keep working hard to make it even easier to find the information you need.
Keeping WordPress.com’s documentation up to date and accessible is one part of what the Happiness Team works on. We’ve long had lots of documentation, but we realized that the design and flow of the support site spoke more to us Happiness Engineers. How backward is that?
That all changes today. Before, you saw a long page filled with lists. Now you see eight content groupings on the homepage.
Before
After!
We looked at a lot of data about where people run into problems with WordPress.com. Using this we redesigned the site by weeding back overgrown lists, eliminating overly complicated jargon, and putting the answers to the questions you’ve asked most front and center.
If those new sections don’t have the answers you seek, we prominently placed a very effective search option at the top right that is perfect for pinpointing an answer to an obscure issue.
There’s more coming too so keep an eye out. We’ll keep working hard to make it even easier to find the information you need.
You already know that you can choose from over 130 awesome themes here at WordPress.com, but did you know that you can create a theme that’s entirely unique to you with the Custom Design upgrade?
To see just how powerful Custom Design is, take a look at this diverse collection of sites that are all using the exact same theme:
These all have a completely different look and feel because each site makes use of the many customization options that the Twenty Eleven theme offers. Adding the Custom Design upgrade, which is compatible with all WordPress.com themes, takes personalization to the next level by allowing you to choose from over 50 gorgeous Typekit fonts to use for your site’s title, headings, and body text.
Additionally, if you’re familiar with CSS, Custom Design enables you to customize your colors, borders, backgrounds, and even the layout of your blog.
Best of all, you can try before you buy. Head to Appearance → Custom Design in your dashboard to test out Custom Design right now.
Find details and CSS resources in the Custom Design support document.
So, how will you customize your blog’s design?
You already know that you can choose from over 130 awesome themes here at WordPress.com, but did you know that you can create a theme that’s entirely unique to you with the Custom Design upgrade?
To see just how powerful Custom Design is, take a look at this diverse collection of sites that are all using the exact same theme:
These all have a completely different look and feel because each site makes use of the many customization options that the Twenty Eleven theme offers. Adding the Custom Design upgrade, which is compatible with all WordPress.com themes, takes personalization to the next level by allowing you to choose from over 50 gorgeous Typekit fonts to use for your site’s title, headings, and body text.
Additionally, if you’re familiar with CSS, Custom Design enables you to customize your colors, borders, backgrounds, and even the layout of your blog.
Best of all, you can try before you buy. Head to Appearance → Custom Design in your dashboard to test out Custom Design right now.
Find details and CSS resources in the Custom Design support document.
So, how will you customize your blog’s design?
Today we’re pleased to introduce the latest addition to our themes, Skeptical. Originally released by WooThemes for self-hosted WordPress.org blogs, Skeptical has seen great popularity as a blog theme. Now, it is available on WordPress.com.
The Skeptical Theme
The WordPress.com version is designed with Post Formats in mind. Skeptical supports nine post formats – standard, quote, aside, image, gallery, chat, audio, link, and video. Just by looking at the screenshot above, however, you can’t see all of the ingredients that make this theme sizzle. Now would be a good time to read all about Skeptical’s features on the Theme Showcase.
Today we’re pleased to introduce the latest addition to our themes, Skeptical. Originally released by WooThemes for self-hosted WordPress.org blogs, Skeptical has seen great popularity as a blog theme. Now, it is available on WordPress.com.
The Skeptical Theme
The WordPress.com version is designed with Post Formats in mind. Skeptical supports nine post formats – standard, quote, aside, image, gallery, chat, audio, link, and video. Just by looking at the screenshot above, however, you can’t see all of the ingredients that make this theme sizzle. Now would be a good time to read all about Skeptical’s features on the Theme Showcase.
Over on the WordPress.org blog, there’s an interesting story about the growth of WordPress, the software that powers WP.com here, and the ecosystem around it.
WP.com is different from every other social platform out there because in addition to giving you ownership of your data you get ownership of the code running your data as well, you could run the same Open source software yourself, and in fact we’ll even help you do it.
Open Source is like a Bill of Rights for software that protects your essential freedoms. When you bring a friend to WordPress you can do it without worry because we’re building something to be around ten, twenty, thirty years from now.
If you’d like to learn more about what’s happening and coming in the wider world of WordPress, check out this presentation I made:
Happy blogging.
Over on the WordPress.org blog, there’s an interesting story about the growth of WordPress, the software that powers WP.com here, and the ecosystem around it.
WP.com is different from every other social platform out there because in addition to giving you ownership of your data you get ownership of the code running your data as well, you could run the same Open source software yourself, and in fact we’ll even help you do it.
Open Source is like a Bill of Rights for software that protects your essential freedoms. When you bring a friend to WordPress you can do it without worry because we’re building something to be around ten, twenty, thirty years from now.
If you’d like to learn more about what’s happening and coming in the wider world of WordPress, check out this presentation I made:
Happy blogging.
Here at WordPress.com we care about making things look good. Automattic, Inc., our parent company, invests heavily in design: every engineering team has a full-time designer. We know making things look and feel great is important and we love making things people love to use.
Over the last few weeks we’ve studied the most popular features people add to their blogs. Things like Sharing, Likes and Ratings. Previously when you turned them on it made your blog look cluttered, defeating the purpose of the features themselves. This made us sad.
After much research, prototyping and testing by Beau and Hugo, we’ve released a simplified, more attractive design. These features now appear as friends, lining up in orderly columns, sharing attractive styles and working together to get you the activity from your visitors you want to have.
You may notice the designs for individual buttons have changed. One specific difference is now the ‘smart button’ setting is now global (renamed “Official Buttons”) and not per button. If you had mixed buttons before, you’ll now have them unified. This was a necessary tradeoff to make the larger design changes possible.
We think you and your visitors will appreciate this new design. If you haven’t used features like Sharing before, now is a great time to turn them on.
Here at WordPress.com we care about making things look good. Automattic, Inc., our parent company, invests heavily in design: every engineering team has a full-time designer. We know making things look and feel great is important and we love making things people love to use.
Over the last few weeks we’ve studied the most popular features people add to their blogs. Things like Sharing, Likes and Ratings. Previously when you turned them on it made your blog look cluttered, defeating the purpose of the features themselves. This made us sad.
After much research, prototyping and testing by Beau and Hugo, we’ve released a simplified, more attractive design. These features now appear as friends, lining up in orderly columns, sharing attractive styles and working together to get you the activity from your visitors you want to have.
You may notice the designs for individual buttons have changed. One specific difference is now the ‘smart button’ setting is now global (renamed “Official Buttons”) and not per button. If you had mixed buttons before, you’ll now have them unified. This was a necessary tradeoff to make the larger design changes possible.
We think you and your visitors will appreciate this new design. If you haven’t used features like Sharing before, now is a great time to turn them on.